Oettinger hits out against nationalisation of energy policy

European energy commissioner Günther Oettinger has blasted the UK’s power capacity mechanism policy as a threat to prospects for a single European market.

The commissioner slated moves by European Union (EU) member states that he claimed were making energy policy in the bloc nationally focused rather than European. He said he was looking to a European market that included feed-in-tariffs and capacity mechanisms adding: “What I can’t accept is 28 parallel capacity mechanisms – that would be the end of the internal market [in energy].

“We are working on European-ising our energy strategy yet for various reasons national energy policies are moving towards the opposite,” Oettinger said. “Sometimes I think we are taking two steps forward and one step back. Or even one forward and two back.”

Oettinger said a recent statement signed by ten energy company chiefs warning that EU energy policy was becoming regional not European was “entirely justified criticism”. He said he had set up an “open-ended session” to be held “in the next few weeks” with those companies and the energy ministers from the countries where the companies had their headquarters.

The companies were Eni, GDF Suez, Enel, Eon, RWE, Vattenfall, CEZ, Iberdrola, Gas Natural and Gas Terra.

Oettinger was speaking at the unveiling of an EU initiative that makes €5.85 billion in funding available to projects European energy infrastructure projects. Among 248 “Projects of Common Interest” (PCI) that could be eligible for funding the UK has an upgrade to the interconnector with Franceand a new link with Belgium.

PCI will be given accelerated planning permission and reach authorisation stage within 3.5 years, said Oettinger. “We don’t want a never-ending saga but a quick authorisation process.”

The funds will not be available to all projects but limited to those “where social access and social justice come into play”. Projects that can be funded by the market will be excluded. Funding will be through various instruments including subsidised interest rates, risk guarantees, project bonds and cash.

The PCI were a stage toward a goal supported by the European Parliament to have 10 per cent of the power use in every EU member state to be imported cross-border from elsewhere in the EU, Oettinger said. He said also the gas transmission PCI would move closer to giving every member state access to at least two sources of gas.